


as i went out one morning

by vtforpedro



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bakery, Falling In Love, False Identity, Feel-good, Fluff and Humor, Healing, Healthy Relationships, Light Angst, M/M, Original Percival Graves is a Softie, POV Original Percival Graves, Recovery, they both get a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:34:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27569110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vtforpedro/pseuds/vtforpedro
Summary: In which Percival Graves tries to find peace while he heals after the arrest of a dark wizard and meets a man who is on his own journey toward healing.
Relationships: Credence Barebone/Original Percival Graves
Comments: 31
Kudos: 68





	as i went out one morning

When Graves had been taken out of that hole in the ground, weak and malnourished, near death, he had thought life would never be the same for him.  
  
The immense anger burned in him from his first day in St Lyptus’ and though he had been there for two and a half months, working with a Healer to try and get his mind as healthy as his body, the anger never quite left. His Healer helped him get to a place where it was more manageable and what Graves thought would never happen again, he’d been able to do.  
  
He thought MACUSA and being an Auror had been left behind. He doubted his abilities, he doubted his entire department, but after working with his Healer, those things eased somewhat. Eased enough to get back to work, to join the Court once more, to pick up where he left off.  
  
Graves is still angry. Sometimes it’s overwhelming how angry he is, at himself and MACUSA and Grindelwald, at everyone, and he drinks more whiskey than he should but it’s about the only thing that calms the anger he can’t control when he’s home.  
  
Work does help once he gets back into the swing of things. Once he’s had a thorough and long meeting with his entire department about why it happened and why it was never going to happen again, they look at him as they always did. No longer with fear or wariness - not wariness because Grindelwald had been pretending to be him for three fucking months, but wariness that Graves wasn’t handling it well - but with respect.  
  
They all seem to respect him more than they already did, which surprises him because he failed at fighting Grindelwald off to begin with. It’s been beaten into his head that he was ambushed and couldn’t have prevented it by his Healer, by Sera and Fontaine and his sister Eliza, but Graves can’t shake the feeling of inadequacy. He drags Fontaine down to the training rooms and burns some steam off that way, which helped long before Grindelwald came around, and sharpens his wandwork after not holding his wand for such a long time. It doesn’t take long to get as quick as he always was.  
  
Graves has heard the entire story of those three months. He heard most of it in the hospital but once he’d gotten past some of the more dangerous anger he was feeling, he’d been open to asking questions, to having it thoroughly explained to him just what in the hell Grindelwald did while wearing his face.  
  
He apologized to Tina for the frankly absurd fact that Grindelwald sentenced her to immediate death one November day and people he knew nearly carried it out and she might have burst into tears and hugged him, but they both pretend that didn’t happen now.  
  
The entire fiasco with Newt Scamander and his various escaped creatures hadn’t seemed real when he’d first heard it, but nowadays he’s only grateful he never met the man because he’d probably arrest him, no matter if he was the one to detect it was Grindelwald and not himself in their midst.  
  
Credence Barebone is another angle to the story and the mere thought of an Obscurus in America - in New York - throws him as much as everything else does. He regrets that the young man was killed and sympathizes with Tina that he could have been saved if they’d listened to Newt, but Grindelwald had made that impossible.  
  
Barebone was twenty-six years old, unheard of as far as an Obscurial goes, and Graves knows if he’d been given the chance to live a normal life as a normal wizard, he might’ve made a name for himself with the strength he had in him.  
  
He didn’t get that chance and Graves knows that Grindelwald manipulated him for months using his face, which makes him feel dirty at best and like an intruder in his own skin at worst. But Barebone is dead and doesn’t have to deal with knowing it was a lunatic who had been manipulating him while also trying to control the Obscurus inside him.  
  
Lucky him, Graves thinks sometimes, when he’s feeling bitter and has been at a whiskey bottle for a while.  
  
His usual work had only taken about a week to feel normal. He’s not lost anything, now that his body is healthy and the strength in his defenses are back, in his wand and mind, and he does his work as well as he always has.  
  
It helps, the distraction of it, and it helps that he was a workaholic before and still is now, so he doesn’t have to think about the shitshow of those five and a half months. He takes longer lunches and occasionally invites Tina to join him, because she shares some of that shitshow with him. It takes her a while to relax around him but she eventually does and while she’s incredibly different from Sera, he enjoys speaking with her.  
  
Sera and Graves haven’t exactly repaired much of anything between them. She’s been his closest friend for twenty-six fucking years and hadn’t sniffed out Grindelwald and it stings more than anything.  
  
He hasn’t forgiven Fontaine for it either but Fontaine lets him throw curses at him every few days and doesn’t complain that Graves isn’t holding back anymore.  
  
Graves still sees his Healer once a week and she tells him that he needs to speak with them, he needs to repair what was broken, but he’s not ready for that yet. She understands but tells him not to wait until he’s dead.  
  
Grindelwald is back in Europe, locked away in Azkaban prison, but he won’t stay there forever. He might not come back to America, at least not for a long while, and Graves has a strong desire for vengeance, but he knows he’s far more useful alive than dead.  
  
If he was to ever face off Grindelwald, he doesn’t know if his anger would let him prevail or be the reason for his downfall, so he stays in New York and he will even when Grindelwald inevitably escapes.  
  
It’s a cool day in early April when Graves is sitting in his office and trying to avoid a headache as he reads one of his junior’s reports and tries to decipher what in Merlin’s name is written on it. Juniors are bad at reports in the beginning, leaving too much out or putting far too much in, and the rambling ones are worse because Graves has to try and find the details that actually matter. The ones that leave too much out he simply hands back and tells them if it doesn’t look better in an hour he’ll stick them back in the training program for two weeks.  
  
Always works in his favor.  
  
Barrows steps into his office and tells him about a murder of a wizard in Brooklyn. It’s not pretty, he adds, because he hadn’t been found until today and has been dead for a couple weeks, likely, but it was dark magic that caused his death, traces of it still in his apartment.  
  
Graves sighs, not sure if he’s happy to leave the report or not, and goes to Brooklyn.  
  
He walks the scene with some of his Aurors and knows this is a follower of Grindelwald’s work. They reek of him, different from other murderers. Whether it has anything to do with Grindelwald or not will take some digging and Graves tells Barrows and his seniors to get on it.  
  
When he leaves the apartment building, he is prepared to Disapparate back to MACUSA, but something stops him. It’s been a long time since he was even in Brooklyn, he realizes, when he used to be often enough, like all the boroughs, before last August.  
  
He takes a walk, because why the fuck not, he deserves it, and leaves the neighborhoods for the more bustling streets. Graves watches the people walking on the sidewalks, no-majs lost in conversation or striding back to work, done with lunch, and wonders what it’s like to be them. To not know what happened, to not know a dark wizard had nearly ruined everything.  
  
No-majs have no idea how often they’re protected by him, by his department, and it can be amusing to think about, unless he’s questioning a no-maj and it isn’t so amusing anymore. They give him a worse headache than his junior Aurors.  
  
Graves rounds a corner and sees a new shop, a bakery, that wasn’t there before August. It’s a bright spot on the street, eye-catching, and the name in golden letters is _Kowalski Quality Baked Goods._ No-maj owned and Graves, who is so used to avoiding anything no-maj owned for most of his life, finds he likes the idea of escaping wizarding shops.  
  
People stare at him even more than they already did and sometimes it makes him want to fly into a rage and curse them to hell and back again. Most no-majs don’t know him, don’t care about him, and the idea of a pastry and coffee sounds perfect right now, after the scene he was just at.  
  
Graves crosses the street and walks to the bakery, not filled with many people, the lunch hour ending and the morning rush long over. He opens the gleaming glass door and steps inside, smelling freshly baked bread and sugar, as well as coffee, all a balm to his ever raging soul.  
  
There’s a crash behind the counter that makes about every instinct to whip out his wand flare up but Graves looks behind it and glimpses a man rounding a corner into the back room.  
  
“What the— you okay?” the other man behind the counter asks after his coworker. He frowns and looks up at Graves then and blinks a few times.  
  
If Graves didn’t know any better, he’d say the man recognizes him and that may well be true, depending on whatever the hell Grindelwald did with his face. He’s tempted to turn around and leave but the man recovers himself and smiles. It’s a nervous smile and the bright lights of the bakery show he’s sweating and Graves is… well, he’s too damn experienced with the horrors of life to care about making anyone nervous anymore.  
  
Not that he has for a long time.  
  
“Good afternoon, sir,” the man says, bouncing on his heels. “Nice day, huh?”  
  
“Sure,” Graves says and glances around the shop. It’s decorated well, filled with an assortment of baked goods in paper or pastry boxes. Cookies are tied in tall tiers of plastic wrap with ribbon and Graves glances at the man behind the counter, still smiling nervously, and suspects he’s the owner. “You must have opened this not too long ago.”  
  
“Uhh, yeah, just a couple months ago,” he says. “Wanted to open it for a lot longer but the war and factory work, you know, took a while to save.” He coughs. “Anything I can get for you?”  
  
“Two of those apple turnovers,” Graves says and points at the glass display containing freshly baked pastries, not many left. He can see that the man who had gone into the back had dropped a tray filled with cookies, most of them scattered across the ground behind the counter. “And a cup of coffee.”  
  
The man nods. “Course, sir. Don’t worry about those, plenty of others in the back,” he says as he glances down at the cookies with a grimace. “Cream and sugar?”  
  
“No,” Graves says. “Thank you. Mister Kowalski, is it?”  
  
“Yes, sir, that’s me,” Kowalski says with another tight smile. “You in Brooklyn for work?”  
  
Graves knows when someone is hiding something from him and Kowalski stinks of it, but he’s a no-maj. It makes Graves think of Grindelwald again and he’s sure he doesn’t want to know if that’s why Kowalski is nervous. It may just be the strong aura of not giving a shit while simultaneously being angry at the very world he’s sure he stinks of too, but he decides to ignore it because the turnovers look good and the coffee smells divine.  
  
“I am,” Graves says. “Finished now, but I haven’t been in Brooklyn in a while, so this place is new to me. Must be popular.”  
  
Kowalski nods and his shoulders seem to be relaxing. “Crazy kinda popular,” he says. “Like no one has ever seen an apple turnover before popular. But times are hard right now, you know, so it’s a good place to come to before work for a lot of people here. My dream came true so I’m just happy to see other people happy with it too. Here or to go?”  
  
Graves smiles shortly. “Here,” he says. “Dreams do so rarely come true, don’t they? Thank you.” He takes the plate Kowalski gives him with the turnovers and Kowalski gestures for him to sit at one of the few tables.  
  
He brings Graves the coffee and eyes Graves when he thinks he’s not looking. It’s bizarre but Graves knows dangerous-bizarre and this isn’t it, so he turns to his turnovers and coffee with a murmured thanks.  
  
Kowalski disappears into the back and Graves sees a no-maj newspaper on a table next to him and grabs it. He’d read half of it this morning already, always a good idea to check no-maj goings-on that might be a glaring sign of dark magic activity, and opens it to the page he’d left off on before he’d headed into work.  
  
He’s aware of Kowalski cleaning up the cookies and muttering quietly and a little frantically to whoever is in the back, but Graves ignores that too.  
  
Stranger things have gone on in his life recently and Graves wants to pretend for a few minutes that nothing strange is happening because he’s not sure he can take it without blacking out in a rage and who knows what he’d do then?  
  
Anger is always simmering below the surface but the turnovers are good and the coffee is too, if a little weaker than what he prefers. Nothing to rage about and after a while he gets lost in the paper anyway, still amazed at the things no-majs concern themselves with every time he opens their paper.  
  
He supposes they’d be amazed by what wizards concern themselves with - he is too sometimes, honestly, and thinks of _Witches Weekly_ \- and smiles wryly as he flips a page.  
  
When he’s finished the turnovers, delightfully good, and his coffee, Graves stands and nods at Kowalski behind the counter. He nods and waves in an awkward sort of half gesture and Graves steps out into the afternoon, steadily warming up.  
  
He looks up at the sky, bright blue and clear, the sun shining, and takes a moment to appreciate it. He’d gone without sunlight for three months and he takes a moment out of each of his days to admire the night sky, the moon and stars, sunrises and sunsets, clear blue skies. He never really had before and it’s a shame because every bit of it is beautiful.  
  
Graves has been changed by what Grindelwald did. It’s not a surprise but he supposes the surprise lies in the fact that he’s only been changed in the way he carries anger and the little things he appreciates more, when he thought everything he’d known was over.  
  
It’s hard to be grateful for anything, but he is glad that he remembers to be grateful to see a sunrise, beautifully orange and violet and gleaming white off of clouds, a calm way to start his days. He thinks if he hadn’t learned to stop and watch, the anger he feels would be less in his control than it already is.  
  
But he has work to get back to and once he finds the nearest alley, he Disapparates back to MACUSA and back to rambling reports and fighting off headaches.  
  
——  
  
Graves forgets about the bakery for a week. It’s not until he sees one of his juniors eating a blueberry muffin one morning that he remembers it.  
  
Remembers the strangeness of a no-maj that seemed to recognize him, but there was no danger there and he doubts there ever will be. He has fonder thoughts about the turnovers and the coffee and the somewhat peaceful break he’d gotten from his day. Nearly every week he witnesses a gruesome scene, but he does take longer lunches now to break up the week and most of them are outside of MACUSA, if he can help it.  
  
Dragon Street sometimes or other wizarding establishments, but he’s thinking about adding more no-maj restaurants or delis just so he can continue to get away from the people who know him, who stare.  
  
Wryly, he thinks he won’t find that at Kowalski’s, but Merlin knows why. There are no alarm bells telling him to stay away, so when lunch comes around, Graves leaves MACUSA and goes to Brooklyn.  
  
The bakery is busier today, the beginning of the lunch hour versus the end, and there’s a line. Thankfully most people are buying what they want and taking it with them, so there are a few tables open. He doesn’t check the time, doesn’t care to, doesn’t care how long he spends in here, because there’s no one to tell him to get back to work.  
  
No one but him and he’s forced himself to calm that voice a little. He may still be a workaholic but he needs time to wind down now more than ever.  
  
Baked goods threaten to make it even better.  
  
When he’s third in line, he sees a man walk out from the back with a tray full of sweet breads to stock the display cases. He’s tall and pale, with dark hair that’s sticking up everywhere and manages to still look good. He’s in his mid to late twenties, Graves would guess, and he smiles at a little girl admiring the breads as he stocks them.  
  
Graves is a little taken with that smile, kind and wide and beautiful, and is struck by the fact that this is the first time he’s found appreciation for a handsome man since last August.  
  
Any thoughts of attraction, let alone anything else, have vanished and Graves doesn’t particularly want them back anytime soon. He’s only ever really had casual sex for the last fifteen years but even the thought of that right now makes his skin crawl.  
  
He should tell Eliza that, he thinks, so she might get a laugh out of the fact that sex sounds repulsive to him now and not just her.  
  
Graves watches the man hand the girl a slice of one of the sweet breads and Kowalski holds out his hands.  
  
“Gonna put me out of business,” he says but he’s grinning and winks at the girl, who giggles.  
  
She’s even more thrilled to get a muffin when Kowalski gives it to her, waving off her mother’s protests when she tries to pay for them. Graves watches them and he’s smiling, he realizes, but he supposes acts of kindness aren’t exactly something he witnesses very often.  
  
He looks up at the other man behind the counter who waves at the girl as her and her mother leave. His eyes meet Graves’ then and to Graves’ surprise, he turns stark white and the smile vanishes. He looks frozen to the spot, almost fearful, and Graves knows he’s never seen him before.  
  
Has no idea why he would be fearful of Graves and he can only think of Grindelwald and it makes his stomach churn so much he thinks about leaving and not coming back.  
  
But the man stiffly walks to the back room when Graves looks away and he realizes he’s next in line. The last person in line, in fact, and Kowalski looks surprised to see him, but not as nervous as before. His eyes dart toward the back room and then to Graves before he smiles.  
  
“Welcome back! Turnovers bring a lot of people back in,” he says proudly. “What can I get you?”  
  
“Cherry turnovers today. And coffee,” Graves says. He watches Kowalski get a plate and the turnovers onto it. “Mister Kowalski.”  
  
Kowalski looks apprehensive and straightens his spine. “Yes, sir?” he asks, no longer smiling.  
  
“Do we know each other?” Graves asks, though it’s possibly the last thing he wants to know, if it has to do with Grindelwald. “I seemed to give your employee a fright just now.”  
  
“Oh, Elijah?” Kowalski asks with a nervous laugh. “No, no, I’m sure you didn’t. We’ve never met before anyway, you and I. I’d remember that, I think. Elijah was up in Manhattan for a while, if you’re ever there.”  
  
Graves wonders then if Grindelwald truly did have something to do with the shock and fear in Elijah’s eyes. It makes him feel sick, the amount of fear the bastard caused while wearing his face, but he only smiles shortly and takes the turnovers and coffee after paying.  
  
“Manhattan is my stomping ground,” Graves says. “Some people recognize me due to police work. I promise I am only interested in baked goods and coffee while I’m here. No need to worry, if either of you recognize me either way.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, course,” Kowalski says. “Maybe that’s how. No worries. You’re a detective?”  
  
“Consultant for the NYPD,” Graves says, which is the truth. “I understand that can frighten people sometimes.”  
  
Kowalski shakes his head. “Hard work you guys do. Hard to be frightened of that,” he says and looks toward the back room. “Especially now,” he adds, a bit louder.  
  
Graves squints at him and walks to the table he’d sat in before. There’s no newspaper near him to keep him occupied but the cherry turnovers are as good as the apple had been and the coffee seems stronger today.  
  
Elijah doesn’t make another appearance until Graves is halfway done and he seems to be avoiding looking at Graves as he restocks the display counters and helps a few customers. But he’s not so pale anymore and the fact that he’s not staring at Graves puts him slightly more at ease.  
  
It’s not until Graves stands to go that they catch each other’s eye again. Elijah looks at Graves and it’s hard to read him, when Graves usually doesn’t have a hard time reading anyone. He nods at them both and leaves, back to MACUSA, and debates coming back at all.  
  
——  
  
After another two weeks of nonstop work, of cleaning up after Grindelwald’s followers who seem to enjoy making messes for the sake of making messes, Graves is frustrated.  
  
He’s taken plenty of lunches with Tina and Queenie, who he knows without a doubt were strange with him one day, but normal all the following days. He’s questioning his sanity, why people he knows and doesn’t know look at him oddly, but his instincts tell him they _were_ behaving abnormally, and he hasn’t got any fucking clue why, so he just thanks Merlin they don’t talk to him about it.  
  
Graves is still avoiding Sera and doesn’t take Fontaine up on his offers of lunch yet, even if his Healer tells him he should. Harboring anger only means he’s protecting his pain, is what she’d told him and he’d like to scoff and laugh at her, but he can’t because he knows it’s the truth.  
  
He’s hurt that people he’s friends with, that people he’s worked with for twenty fucking years and known even longer, didn’t recognize he wasn’t himself for an entire three damn months.  
  
And _hurt feelings_ make Graves angrier. He’s supposed to be beyond having his feelings hurt but his Healer likes to remind him he’s human and went through something most people don’t, so hurt feelings aren’t exactly a shock.  
  
It still makes him uncomfortable in his own skin. He hasn’t been hurt by anyone in so long, probably does the hurting himself, honestly, and he’s not good at handling it. Graves knows actually speaking with Sera and Fontaine would be a good first step - the first time he’d spoken to Sera after he was rescued he’d yelled at her about when she thought he picked up a taste for scorpion pins, for Merlin’s fucking sake - but he isn’t ready.  
  
He just isn’t ready for those conversations. He’s been out of the hospital for two months and that isn’t exactly a long period of time, so he thinks he’s earned the right to need more time to be ready.  
  
That alone is abnormal for Graves too and it only makes him more frustrated. He doesn't have the time to not be ready in his career, which carries over into his personal life, and he has done what needs to be done as soon as humanly possible for most of his life, so this newfound _needing time_ only serves to make his blood boil.  
  
As everything does these days. Graves told his Healer he’s stuck in a vicious cycle and when she asked him how he thought it could be stopped, he’d told her three glasses of whiskey a night make it stop pretty well.  
  
She wasn’t thrilled with that answer but she’d smiled anyway. Told him he’d end up back in the hospital if he didn’t cut back soon enough though.  
  
Graves is down to two full glasses of whiskey a night and doesn’t think the anger he feels will be controllable if he goes any lower than that.  
  
It makes the nightmares stop and Graves can’t afford nightmares right now.  
  
After cleaning up the mess of a witch hexing a no-maj in broad daylight in Queens, a nightmare in and of itself, Graves tells Fontaine he’ll be back in an hour or two and Apparates to Brooklyn.  
  
He’d convinced himself he wasn’t going to come back because he is fairly sure that Elijah recognizes him from when a different man wore his face and that _is_ dangerous, but he doesn’t know if it’s because Elijah witnessed something - magic or magic being used in a harmful way - or was scared off by Grindelwald’s general sliminess.

Graves wants to brandish the paper that broke the entire story the day after it all happened and tell him _see, it was this pasty bastard, not me,_ _I don’t wear scorpion pins on my fucking ties_.  
  
But he doesn’t. He merely steps inside the bakery and lets the scent of baking dough and sweet fruits and rich chocolate calm him down. The coffee in particular will help, after he’d spent twenty minutes asking the witch what in the fuck she was thinking and not getting a straight answer.  
  
These things are a little more commonplace after Grindelwald left his stain on New York City and Graves is having his department come down hard on these people to hopefully put a stop to it. Before anyone gets any bright ideas to break the Statute in a spectacular way and Graves has to blow them to smithereens for doing it.  
  
But he tries not to think about that as he walks to the counter. Kowalski finally doesn’t look so nervous and Elijah isn’t around, which is probably a good thing. Kowalski asks for his name and he says Percy, because these are no-majs and if anyone here called him Graves, he might lose his mind. He comes here to be normal and though normal isn’t exactly what he’s experienced here, something keeps dragging him back anyway.  
  
Kowalski says to call him Jacob and Graves thinks he’ll do just that.  
  
Graves gets two muffins, peaches and cream and blueberry, along with his usual cup of coffee and sits at what is becoming his usual table. He looks around for the paper and idly thinks he needs to start bringing it with him when he goes into work.  
  
He’s halfway through his first muffin when Elijah comes out of the backroom. Graves sees that he’s not shocked this time, supposes Kowalski told him he was here, but there’s no trace of a smile on him.  
  
They don’t stare at each other but now and then Graves looks up and sees Elijah glancing at him. Sees him hastily look away and fumble with whatever he’s holding, his ears red.  
  
Graves thinks he might laugh or cry or demand to know how Elijah knows him, but it turns out he’s not the first one to bridge that gap.  
  
It’s his fifth time in the bakery, when he’s sitting with a small sweet roll filled with dried fruits and a slice of lemon loaf with thin icing that’s as delightful as the apple turnover had been, thinking he should bring Eliza a piece or three, when Elijah approaches him.  
  
Graves is a little surprised himself this time when he looks up at him. Elijah looks pale again, nervous, and he’s looking at Graves’ shoulder when he hands him the no-maj newspaper.  
  
“Jacob said you look for the paper every time you come in,” he says, his voice soft and kind but anxious. “I have it delivered here in the morning so I can read when I’m done helping with the… with the early morning baking.”  
  
Graves takes the paper. “Thank you. Thoughtful of you,” he says and watches Elijah wet his lips nervously. “Elijah, isn’t it?”  
  
“Yes,” Elijah says quickly. “Your name is Percy?”  
  
“My father would insist on Percival but that’s for serious people.”  
  
“Are you not a serious person?” Elijah asks and he’s not looking at Graves but there’s a faint smile on him now and he looks vaguely taken aback by Graves’ response.  
  
Graves wants to thoroughly apologize to him for whatever path he crossed with Grindelwald. One conversation with the man is enough to haunt anyone for life and Graves saw him every two or three days for three months. He understands.  
  
The wizarding world should be thanking him for that, he thinks wryly, and should be grateful that he hasn’t cracked yet.  
  
“Well,” Graves says. “Only when it matters. At _Kowalski Quality Baked Goods,_ I think I’m more of a Percy.”  
  
“You dress seriously,” Elijah says and bites his lip after, which is a bit distracting.  
  
Graves can’t afford to catch feelings on top of everything else so he firmly locks that away. “Lunch break. I do have a serious job.”  
  
“Consultant for the NYPD?”  
  
“Sometimes the things they see need an additional pair of eyes to make sense of.”  
  
Elijah looks at him then, more directly than he has so far, and it’s a piercing sort of gaze. Like he’s trying to suss out a liar, something Graves is intimately familiar with, and he lets him look.  
  
“I’m sorry about the first couple of times you came in. I mistook you for someone else, it turns out,” he says. “I’m glad you came back.”  
  
“So am I,” Graves says. “Don’t worry about it. I suppose I just have one of those faces.”  
  
“You have a unique face,” Elijah says.  
  
Graves coughs when his ears turn red and he looks mortified with himself and picks up his coffee so he doesn’t laugh and embarrass Elijah more. “I’m not entirely sure if that’s a compliment or not,” he says and takes a drink of his coffee.  
  
“It… it was,” Elijah mutters. “Sorry. If you come back in, ask for the paper and I’ll bring it to you.”  
  
He’s gone as swiftly as he’d come over and Graves watches him go with a faint smile. He’s not so terrified anymore, yes, but Graves doesn’t believe he mistook him for someone else, though he hadn’t heard any lie in his voice and didn’t see it in his eyes.  
  
It’s still a mystery Graves doesn’t like. He either knows Graves’ face from when Grindelwald wore it and knows he’s different now, possibly even a different person entirely, which means access to the wizarding world in some way.  
  
Or he knows about the entire thing.  
  
Graves knows where his instincts are firmly telling him to go. There was too much fear, too much familiarity and shock for it to be a case of mistaken identity.  
  
Elijah is not the first no-maj, nor will he be the last, to know about the wizarding world in New York. There are probably more than Graves cares to guess, witches and wizards falling in love and swearing no-majs to secrecy. Best friends that grew up together. Family members, of course, in no-maj households, who might tell other close relatives when they are strictly forbidden from it by law.  
  
It happens every day and his department only steps in when they have solid proof of it.  
  
So how does Elijah know about the wizarding world? How does he know Graves is no longer Grindelwald? Just a feeling or knowing because he knows what happened?  
  
Graves has no desire to interrogate him like he usually might. No desire at all to make this a place he can’t come back to because it wouldn’t be quite the same if he Obliviated either of them. Graves’ mind has been altered against his will and he’s less inclined to do it to someone else if there’s no real need for it.  
  
He knows danger when he looks at it, that hasn’t changed, and there’s no danger to be found here, no matter what they know.  
  
Just pastries and coffee and no-maj newspapers. A couple nervous no-majs who are steadily getting used to him being here and him, getting used to and even enjoying coming here. It wasn’t exactly what he wanted, for no one to know him at all, but he’ll take it all the same.  
  
The newspaper was an olive branch and if that puts it behind them, Graves will be grateful for it.  
  
——  
  
It gets easier for the next month. Everything does.  
  
Graves goes to _Kowalski Quality Baked Goods_ when things get overwhelming and he starts going whenever he feels like it too, there at least twice a week, and there are no more frightened glances and no more nervous sweating from Mister Kowalski.  
  
They greet him as Percy, he greets them as Jacob and Elijah, and eats pastries and drinks coffee and goes back to work feeling a little more refreshed each time.  
  
Tina and Queenie ask him where he’s been going lately and he tells them to mind their business, but Tina is especially curious. She’s always had a curious mind, wouldn’t make for a good Auror if she didn’t, but Graves doesn’t know if it’s paranoia or a valid suspicion he feels when she asks him twice more where he’s going that’s putting him in a _human mood._  
  
He doesn’t like her calling it that and makes that well known, but she only shrugs and Graves curses himself for letting her get to know him as more than a mentor, as more than a boss.  
  
She’s mouthy to him now, just like Sera and his Captains, though he hasn’t been experiencing their mouthiness for a while now.  
  
It makes him miss it, just a bit, before he remembers they all let a madman run around MACUSA doing nefarious things and wearing scorpion pins on his ties while doing it and gets angry again.  
  
After the fourth time in as many weeks that Graves has to take Fontaine to the infirmary for some potion to cure whatever he hit him with in the training rooms and listening to Madame Hornwall scold them for twenty minutes, he pushes his anger down just enough to tell Fontaine he’ll meet him at the bar for drinks on Friday.  
  
Something they’d done for nearly twenty years, something they haven’t done since Graves got out of the hospital. Grindelwald went a few times, but he’d mostly made up excuses - no fucking shit, Graves tells Fontaine - to get out of it and Fontaine never thought that was suspicious apparently.  
  
He says that everyone assumed Graves had started seeing someone and that pisses him off a little more when he thinks about the brand of jackass Grindelwald is compared to him and how he wouldn’t behave that way if he did start seeing someone.  
  
Fontaine only snorts when Graves asks him that Friday over a few glasses of whiskey if he thought his new lover was influencing his scorpion obsession.  
  
They shake hands after that and by Monday it’s as if none of the last couple of handfuls of months had happened.  
  
It’s a different story with Sera, one he’s still not ready for, and his Healer doesn’t push him for once. Says he can enjoy the first step and take the second when he’s ready, as long as it’s before he’s dead, as she always loves to remind him.  
  
She rolls her eyes when he says he never planned on living that long anyway.  
  
The bakery is a break in the madness that is being an Auror, that is being the Director of Magical Security, that is being in the _after Grindelwald_ portion of his life.  
  
Graves is afraid to admit it to his Healer, but he thinks he may well come out of this whole thing entirely the same as he was before, once the anger is gone and his drinking habit is more manageable. He doesn’t think he can bear her smile and _I told you so_ that she might not say, but he’d know it was hanging in the air nonetheless.  
  
He might come out of this nursing a wounded pride, with a somewhat softer disposition, and drinking an extra shot or two of whiskey a night, not too much, but otherwise unharmed and it’s a wonder when he thinks about the three months he spent in that cellar.  
  
Torture and hell, agony, physically and emotionally, thinking of Eliza with Grindelwald, let alone everyone else.  
  
Grindelwald avoided Eliza for the most part, it had turned out, because Graves often couldn’t make the time during the holidays to see her, business as usual, except Christmas Day and Grindelwald had been desperate enough to avoid _family time_ with his sister that he’d had his supporters set off numerous hexes that day and used the excuse to work.  
  
It’s about the only thing that puts tears in Graves’ eyes from laughing rather than crying.  
  
He spends plenty of time crying in the shower and it feels good to laugh now and then.  
  
Graves can’t blame his sister when Grindelwald only had two short encounters with her because no one had come to her to tell her he was behaving strangely. Eliza lived her life, business as usual after all, without any reason to suspect he was locked in a hole in the ground and thinking he’d never see her again.  
  
He sees her often now, the only person he feels at ease enough to laugh with until there are tears in his eyes and at ease enough to cry with until she wipes his tears away.  
  
That’s what big sisters are for, he supposes. She vows she’ll take her revenge on Grindelwald and threatens to curse Graves when he reminds her she’s good with charms, not offensive spells, and is also an old lady anyway.  
  
Graves thinks he’s lucky to have her, even if he hadn’t thought that when he was rescued, because for a few weeks he had wished he died in that hole. He knew what road laid ahead of him, but it turns out it’s easier taking it when you have a few guiding hands helping you along the way.  
  
The next time Graves goes to the bakery is at five in the morning, when they open, because he has a two hour lunch with the Court later and he needs something good to start his day for what will inevitably piss him off later.  
  
Jacob is surprised to see him, the first customer of the day, though they begin to pour in within ten minutes. Graves sits at a table in front of the windows today because he can watch the sunrise and eat a banana nut muffin and drink numerous cups of coffee while he does.  
  
Elijah brings him the newspaper, flour dusted all over it and him, on his apron and across his left cheek and on his forehead.  
  
It’s such a charming sight that Graves smiles and keeps smiling for a while after Elijah gets back to baking for the late morning rush.  
  
There’s a lull between customers, those who come at five and those who come at seven, and Graves is finishing off his last cup of coffee, prepared to go start his own day, when Elijah comes to his table again.  
  
He sits across from Graves and sets a plate on the table, pushing it toward him.  
  
“Strudel,” Graves says as he looks at the familiar pastry, similar to a turnover. “How very Austrian of you.”  
  
“Do you not like Austrian food?”  
  
“I have a very good reason to not like Austrians in general, Elijah,” Graves says with a smirk. “I didn’t see these put out.”  
  
“Trying something new,” Elijah says with a faint smile. “Jacob taught me how to make the dough. I think I’ve finally got it down but it took a while, it’s so delicate. Apple turnovers seem to be your favorite, so I thought you might like to test it out.”  
  
Graves smiles and pulls the strudel closer. “These are good with cream on top, you know,” he says and picks up the fork on the plate to cut off a piece. “Pastry seems right.”  
  
Elijah laughs. “You say it like you know pastry as well as Jacob does.”  
  
“My sister,” Graves says, “baked a lot when we were kids. We spent a lot of time avoiding the rest of the house because our mother and father never deigned to enter the kitchen because we had servants to do that. She baked and she educated me on various pastries and other baked goods while I watched her.”  
  
“You didn’t bake with her?” Elijah asks with a smile, looking down at the table.  
  
“Six years between us and she left home at seventeen. Eight year old me did not have the patience for doing it myself but eight year old me was also a sponge that enjoyed learning anything about everything,” Graves says and takes a bite of the strudel. “Same story when I was eleven.”  
  
“Does she still bake?”  
  
“When she’s stressed,” Graves says and taps the strudel with his fork. “Almost perfect.”  
  
“Almost?” Elijah asks and looks amused.  
  
It’s such a marked difference from early April and though Graves hasn’t gotten down to the bottom of Elijah and the mystery surrounding him, he’s glad the worst of it is behind them.  
  
“A minute… minute and a half too long in the oven,” Graves says and lifts the strudel with the fork, gesturing at the darker corners on the bottom. “Get it out earlier and you’ve hit perfect. Start serving it with cream or selling cream to take home and you’ve got your next most popular item.”  
  
“I’ll have to tell Jacob that,” Elijah says with a fonder smile. “I’ll take almost perfect for today though. Thank you, Percy.”  
  
Graves has gotten used to the breathless sort of way Elijah says his name, like he can’t quite believe he’s saying it, that he’s allowed to, another mystery, but it’s starting to drive him a little mad.  
  
Elijah is swiftly moving from _attractive man_ to _endearing man worth taking to dinner and showering with flowers_ but Graves is simply not ready. He’s not ready for that, he sure as shit doesn’t want to inflict himself on anyone, not until he’s back near _almost perfect_ himself.  
  
Things have gotten easier but Graves is still affected by what happened daily. He’s still angry and bitter and he’s still seeing a Healer for it. He’s not ready for romance and the idea of casual sex still makes him queasy.  
  
That’s something he’s got to figure out with his Healer because casual sex was something he enjoyed, something that took the edge off stressful months, and something that meant no attachments.  
  
What he’s been doing since he was twenty-three years old and gave up on the dinner and flowers sort of thing.  
  
Not to mention Elijah is a no-maj, strictly forbidden, not something he would have even entertained last August. But he craves not being known, craves not being stared at, craves being normal, even if he was never truly normal to begin with.  
  
But that’s not Elijah either. He knows Graves, knows his face, knows he’s different from whenever he first met him, knows the wizarding world, all things Graves wants to avoid these days.  
  
Graves thinks he hasn’t pushed to know the truth because he really doesn’t want to. It’s another added layer to the Grindelwald shitshow and he’s not entirely sure he can handle anymore traumatizing news of what Grindelwald did while masquerading as Graves.  
  
It makes him feel cowardly, avoiding the truth and the gritty details that sometimes comes with it, so the opposite of what he does every day, and one day he knows that’ll push him to ask the hard questions.  
  
Hard for them both, Graves thinks.  
  
“You’re welcome,” is what Graves says. “Thank you for letting me try it. I’d offer you the rest of your hard work but I think you’ve sampled it already.”  
  
Elijah blinks and then blushes. “Oh,” he says and wipes off his cheeks and the corners of his mouth. “Oh, don’t laugh,” he mutters when Graves chuckles. “You should’ve seen me the first couple of weeks when I didn’t know what I was doing. Jacob had to brush me down before we opened in the mornings because my hair was white.”  
  
Graves laughs more and shrugs when Elijah squints at him. “I’m sorry, but don’t make it funnier if you don’t want me to laugh,” he says. “You’ve come a long way in just a handful of months. Flour and sugar baths to almost perfection.”  
  
Elijah’s ears are red again, a sight Graves will never get over seeing. “I wanted to learn how to bake,” he says. “And I convinced Jacob to only hire me so I had to. I suppose I’m not bad at it.”  
  
“Strudels are difficult,” Graves says with a smile. “Be proud. Sounds like you took to it as much as my sister did.”  
  
“I wasn’t bad with cooking either but I prefer this, I think,” Elijah says. “Is your sister in Manhattan?”  
  
“She is,” Graves says. “Runs a boutique in Uptown. She deals more in women’s clothing and luxury home items than pastry these days.”  
  
“You should bring her one day,” Elijah says. “She could enjoy pastries without being stressed.”  
  
Graves chuckles. “Maybe I will,” he says. The idea of bringing Eliza to a no-maj bakery is both amusing and depressing, because she’d sniff out why he was there in no time. “Should get to work,” he adds as he glances at the time. “After I finish this almost perfect strudel.”  
  
“You came in so much earlier today,” Elijah says with a smile. “I hope it’s not a stressful day for you too.”  
  
“Immensely,” Graves says. “I’m going grey and I’m not even forty. I get to sit in a large room with a lot of important people and eat fine food while discussing all manners of things going on in the city, including crime and how I’m helping to curb it.”  
  
“It seems like you might be good at that sort of thing.”  
  
“Curbing crime or detailing how I’m doing it?” Graves asks with a smirk. “The last one of these meetings I told three of my colleagues they could shove it up their ass.”  
  
Elijah grimaces. “Were you allowed to get away with that because you’re a consultant?”  
  
“No,” Graves says. “I was allowed to get away with it because I’d just gotten out of the hospital three weeks beforehand and my boss excused my temper for it. We’ll see if she’s feeling anymore lenient today.”  
  
“Maybe you should try to keep your job,” Elijah says with a smile and shakes his head. “Were you in the hospital for a while?”  
  
“Two and a half very long months,” Graves says and watches Elijah’s eyes dart away. Like he knows that already or at least some part of it. “Some illnesses take a while to heal from.”  
  
“You don’t look like you were sick for so long.”  
  
“Should’ve seen me in December,” Graves says. “I didn’t recognize myself.”  
  
“What was it?” Elijah asks quietly and grips at the table, not looking at Graves.  
  
Graves watches him and wonders if he can ask his own questions some day. “A parasite,” he says. The way Elijah looks at him then, like he’s startled by the answer, some fear in his eyes, makes Graves want to ask the questions now. “Parasitic infections aren’t pretty.”  
  
Elijah bites his lip as he stares at Graves. “No,” he says softly. “They’re not. I know a little something about those too.” He looks away and there’s a red tinge to his nose now but it’s not from embarrassment. “Is it all gone?”  
  
“Yes,” Graves says. “I was rid of it in December but recovery took longer.”  
  
“I’m sorry you went through it,” Elijah says. “I’m glad you’re well now. The world is strange sometimes, isn’t it?”  
  
“Very,” Graves agrees. “But what makes you say it now?”  
  
“It’s strange that parasites take over before you know what’s happening,” Elijah says quietly. “It’s strange the way they can change us into different people so easily. It seems strange to be able to recover from that too.”  
  
Graves watches Elijah speak, hears the fear and upset waver his voice, and feels his own heart racing. He’s not entirely sure if Elijah is admitting he knows exactly what happened or if he’s referring to some experience of his own. Or both, maybe, but Graves isn’t sure if they’re related or not.  
  
“Have you recovered too?” he asks.  
  
Elijah smiles and it’s pained. “Most days,” he says and there’s a brightness to his eyes Graves doesn’t like. “I should get back to work and let you go.” He sniffs and stands from the table. “I’ll see you when you next come in?”  
  
“Sure,” Graves says with a frown. “See you then. Take care of yourself.”  
  
Elijah nods and smiles, but it’s paler than his earlier smiles. Graves watches him walk behind the counter and into the back room with a sigh. He thinks he can’t wait much longer to ask his own questions but he’s got no fucking clue how to.  
  
With delicacy, at least, he knows that. Elijah seems to need some sort of delicacy and Graves thinks it’ll be better for both of them when they’ve had the conversation.  
  
He finishes the apple strudel and leaves for work, a busy day ahead of him, and is glad he’ll have things on his mind so he doesn’t dwell on the tears in Elijah’s eyes and wondering if he himself put them there, regardless if it was Grindelwald wearing his face.

His smile and his tentative trust are what Graves wants to see. He’s not sure he can handle tears and the implications of them.  
  
——  
  
Graves is busy for the next two weeks. Busy enough that he can’t leave MACUSA or busy enough that he’s outside of MACUSA heading raids and a four day trip to Washington state to help the Auror department there with Grindelwald’s followers.  
  
Big cities are where they tend to be and it’s a trend across the country that Graves despises seeing. Grindelwald’s message has poisoned minds and even though he was caught and sent to prison, he’s affected enough people in America to make them nuisances at best and murderers at worst.  
  
Every Auror department in large cities around the country are burdened with heavy caseloads and Graves longs for the day someone ends Grindelwald and shows wizardkind that even he could be defeated. Things tend to calm down after that, something they’ve seen many times for hundreds of years, until the next dark wizard comes along with a message that stirs up the worst in people.  
  
Thankfully it isn’t a common occurrence but Grindelwald would like to see it that way. He’d like to see more people rise, rise just enough to break the Statute in ways they can’t fix. He wants them to look down on no-majs, to shift their thinking that the Statute isn’t protecting wizardkind but _them_ instead.  
  
It protects everyone and Grindelwald knows it but his ultimate goal is to be the one that holds the most power in the world. Telling people he doesn’t want to harm no-majs while actively being responsible for their deaths doesn’t seem to affect his followers.  
  
They’re brainwashed by him, as are all people who support a potential dictator, and Graves is annoyed it’s happening while he’s in the Director’s seat because he has more responsibility to be a beacon of hope and strength in MACUSA, to show they are unshakeable, and yet all of the wizarding world knows what happened to him. They know there was a weakness in MACUSA.  
  
Those in MACUSA may look at him with more respect for surviving Grindelwald but Graves knows it’s shaken the common public and he hasn’t been deaf to the people who wonder why he wasn’t replaced. The papers tell the story well enough of what happened - an ambush, as everyone reminds Graves - but that doesn’t stop people questioning his leadership.  
  
Himself included.  
  
But Graves knows what he’s accomplished over the last twenty years. He knows what he’s given, what he’s prevented, what he’s improved. Most of it isn’t in the public eye but there will always be people who doubt him either way now.  
  
He’d probably have to kill Grindelwald to restore his reputation completely and it makes him smile dryly to think of it.  
  
Graves has never looked for thanks, for gratitude, he does the job he does because he enjoys it and because he’s damn good at it. He’ll keep being good at it even if he thinks of his fellows in less flattering ways than he already did.  
  
Pastries are reliable, at the very least, and when Graves gets home from Washington, the first thing he does the following morning is go to Kowalski’s.  
  
He’d gotten in late last night and managed to sleep in until seven and by the time he gets to the bakery it’s not bustling with as many people as it could be.  
  
Graves walks inside and sighs in relief. It’s a strange thought that he feels comfortable here but the homey feeling and brightness of it all, something that he’d usually stay far away from, has become a bit of sanctuary.  
  
Maybe it’s not so strange, he thinks, when he sees Elijah behind the counter speaking with a customer, a wide smile on his face. Wide and carefree, hair a mess as usual, and the sight of him makes Graves’ heart seize in a not altogether unpleasant sort of way.  
  
When Elijah looks at him and his eyes brighten and he smiles more, with an edge of relief to it which Graves doesn’t quite get, it puts something a little like adrenaline in his veins.  
  
He doesn’t have the desire to fight it or flee from it that he did only a couple of weeks ago and that’s worrying because it means he might be open to an opportunity for _more._  
  
But Graves smiles because that’s not Elijah’s problem to figure out.  
  
“Hi, Percy,” Elijah says in that breathless way of his when Graves steps up to the counter. “I’m glad you came back.”  
  
Graves raises his eyebrows. “Did you think I wasn’t going to?” he asks and smiles when Elijah’s eyes dart away and he looks embarrassed for having said it. “The almost perfect strudel didn’t turn me away. I was in Washington or I would have been in earlier.”  
  
“Oh,” Elijah says and bites his lip, like he’s trying not to smile. “Sorry, I thought… oh, it doesn’t matter,” he mutters when Graves tsks. “Were you in Washington for work?”  
  
“I was,” Graves says. “Looks like you’ve perfected the strudel. One of those and coffee, please. Washington is a beautiful place this time of the year but I spent most of my time consulting. Didn’t get to enjoy it as much as I’d like to.”  
  
“It sounds like you travel for your job,” Elijah says as he grabs a strudel from the case. “Do you ever get to enjoy it?”  
  
“Sometimes,” Graves says. “When criminals aren’t giving me a headache.”  
  
“Maybe you should take a vacation.”  
  
Graves laughs. “That’ll be the fucking day,” he says. “Pardon my language. You have the morning paper?”  
  
“I’ll bring it with your coffee,” Elijah says with a grin.  
  
Graves winks and walks to his usual table, in a much better mood than when he’d climbed out of bed this morning. _That’s_ what’s dangerous here, he thinks idly, but he doesn’t plan on not coming back.  
  
Elijah brings him his coffee and the morning paper and a small decorative bowl with clotted cream in it. “Turns out you were right about the cream,” he says. “Not only do more people stay to enjoy it here but we’re selling tubs of it.”  
  
“Beats having to make it at home,” Graves says and smiles. “I do have good ideas occasionally and I’m glad I get to benefit from this one. How have you been?”  
  
“Good,” Elijah says. “Mostly,” he amends. “I was a little worried about you.”  
  
Graves isn’t quite sure how to take that, but certainly not the way his heart reacts to it, fluttering like he’s a damn teenager again. “You don’t ever have to worry about me,” he says. “Short of poisoning me, which I hope you don’t do, I plan on coming back here every week.”  
  
“It wasn’t just the last time you were in,” Elijah says, his cheeks pink. He glances furtively toward the counter and they both lift their hands at Jacob coming in from the back, who perks up and grins at Graves. “Even Jacob is glad to see you’re okay. I don’t know what consulting for police looks like, but I thought something might have happened.”  
  
Graves smiles and shakes his head. “It mostly means a lot of paperwork and theorizing. No shootouts. Well,” he says and shrugs, “not as many as there were when I was younger anyway.”  
  
Elijah huffs a laugh and smiles. “I’m not sure that makes me feel better for when you’re gone for a while again,” he says. “We like to keep our regular customers,” he adds when Graves quirks an eyebrow. “Make sure they didn’t find any rival bakeries.”  
  
Graves laughs. “Not in Brooklyn. Manhattan has a few good ones,” he says. “But I like it here the most.”  
  
“Good,” Elijah says and looks down at the table, still smiling. “You know, you weren’t what I was expecting.”  
  
“No,” Graves agrees with a laugh he can’t help. “You ran from me the first time you saw me so whoever you mistook me for must’ve left a horrible impression.”  
  
“The worst, honestly,” Elijah says with a gentle sigh. “Bad enough to run from, even if I felt like an idiot for it immediately after because I knew you weren’t him. You have much kinder eyes.”  
  
“I’m sorry he wasn’t kind to you,” Graves says. “I would think you’d make it hard for anyone to be unkind to you.”  
  
Elijah raises his eyebrows and smiles, but it’s another pained one, a heaviness to his shoulders now. “I wish I could say that was true but most of New York that I’ve seen was unkind all around,” he says. “That’s Lower Manhattan, I suppose.”  
  
And Gellert fucking Grindelwald, but Graves keeps that to himself for now.  
  
“Uptown isn’t much better,” Graves says with a dry smile. “Things seem to be going your way these days.”  
  
“Mostly,” Elijah says. “I’m lucky to have friends. People that gave me a chance, like Jacob. It’s been difficult but I’m happier here than I ever was in Manhattan.”  
  
“Good,” Graves says. “I’m glad you found that. You deserve good things, Elijah, I hope you know that.”  
  
Elijah bites his lip and he furrows his brow. He looks like he has something in mind to say but the door opens, the bell tinkling above it and he looks at two customers. “I’m starting to believe it,” he says. “Thank you, Percy. I should get back.”  
  
“Thank you,” Graves says. “I’ll be in sooner than I was last time,” he adds with some amusement and chuckles when Elijah cringes and nods, walking back to the counter.  
  
He’s incredibly endearing and Graves wants to know, is finally dying to know what happened, but he thinks it’ll change things and he’s not keen on that idea.  
  
With a sigh, he turns to his apple strudel with cream and coffee, opening the newspaper and hoping he doesn’t find anything to open an investigation for.  
  
——  
  
After a very, very long meeting with Sera and the head of the Curse Breakers department to discuss an immensely important raid they’re planning to make happen in four days, Graves is itching to leave the office.  
  
It’s been three days since he was last at the bakery and each time the clock hits the usual lunch rush, he finds himself craving pastries and coffee and seeing a certain smile.  
  
Conditioning him, _Kowalski Quality Baked Goods,_ but Graves is alright with that.  
  
Unfortunately he has a twelve inch high mound of paperwork on his desk and thinks it might be more responsible to stay and work on it. Get something sent up from the cafeteria and forbid anyone from entering his office unless Grindelwald himself strolled into MACUSA.  
  
He’s about to do just that, walking to his open office door when Tina Goldstein comes hurrying in so quickly they nearly collide. Graves grabs her shoulders when she wobbles and frowns menacingly once he’s righted her.  
  
“Ask Fontaine.”  
  
“I can’t ask Mister Fontaine,” Tina says and straightens out her collar. “Because it has to do with you.”  
  
“Ask me next week then,” Graves says and attempts to shoo her out.  
  
Tina ducks around him, further into his office and he’d normally have a problem with that but he had to go and make friends with her and now she’s mouthy and pushy and scolds him at least twice a week and he can’t even bring it within himself to be annoyed by it.  
  
It started because he felt he owed her something for what Grindelwald did to her but now he just plain enjoys her friendship and it smarts, just a little.  
  
“So I was talking to Queenie last night,” Tina says, “and she told me something kind of funny.”  
  
Graves sighs, long and slow, and crosses his arms. “Was it the one about how the prohibition is forcing no-majs to live on food and water?”  
  
Tina rolls her eyes. “She said she was in Brooklyn. There’s a little boutique there, you know, sells the nicest ladies hats that aren’t so expensive,” she says. “I’m sure you don’t know it, but she said she thought she might have seen you in a no-maj bakery.”  
  
Graves stares at her for a while. “Your sister _did_ see me at a no-maj bakery and you both know it,” he says flatly. “Don’t play coy with me, Goldstein. What about it?”  
  
“Well, it’s just that you won’t tell us where you’ve been going,” Tina says grouchily, giving up all pretenses of obliviousness and levity. “You’re being sneaky about it and we were worried about you. Is that where you’ve been going these last couple of months?”  
  
“I cannot possibly impress upon you enough how much that is absolutely not your business,” Graves says. He’s uncomfortable, his hidden sanctuary not so hidden anymore, and he’s tempted to forbid them from going themselves. Rationality is his strong suit, though, so he’ll stick with it.  
  
“So you’re going for personal reasons? Just to enjoy some pastries? It’s not work-related or anything?” Tina asks apprehensively.  
  
Graves narrows his eyes. “Why the hell does that matter? If I was there because of a case and you don’t know about it, that makes it above your paygrade.”  
  
Tina frowns obstinately. “The pastries then?”  
  
“For Merlin’s sake,” Graves says and rubs his hands over his face. “Can a man not enjoy a fucking apple turnover without one hundred people staring at him?”  
  
“Is that why?” Tina asks with a softer frown. “You just want to avoid being looked at? You’ve never shown any interest in no-maj shops, is all.”  
  
“And I never will again,” Graves says. “Why is your sister frequenting no-maj shops?”  
  
“Sometimes they make quality things. Like hats and pastries,” Tina says and shrugs. “No one stares at you there?”  
  
Graves raises an eyebrow. “Why would no-majs have reason to stare at me in a bakery in Brooklyn?”  
  
Tina flushes. “Oh, no reason. You dress nice for that area, that’s all. Don’t worry,” she says. “We’re not going to follow you there, Percy. We just wanted to make sure you weren’t off being self-destructive.”  
  
“Alright,” Graves says. “I’ve hit my cap on Goldstein insults for the day. Get back to work before I put you on desk duty for a week and mind your damn business. I can be as self-destructive as I please.”  
  
Tina sighs and walks to the door. “That’s what we worry about,” she says and glances back at him. “Do you really go just for the baked goods?”  
  
“And to get away from the Goldsteins of the world, yes,” Graves says and closes the door on her, locking it. He looks around at his office, grinding his teeth and rubs his temples for a while.  
  
Goldstein is not nearly as smart as she thinks she is, nor is she good at hiding what she wants to hide and Graves is simultaneously pissed off about it while wanting to send her off for more Occlumency lessons so she improves.  
  
But if she was already where he’d prefer her to be - she has struggled with Occlumency because she’s so used to Queenie being in her head and not fighting it - he wouldn’t know that she _knows_ something about _Kowalski Quality Baked Goods._  
  
He wouldn’t know that he has every reason now to go kicking down doors and finding out what Jacob and Elijah know and how _Tina Goldstein_ is involved with it. Because she is and so is Queenie.  
  
Ladies hats, his ass.  
  
They’ve been far too interested in where he’s been going, enough for him to be suspicious about it, and there are dots there to connect, but he’s missing one or two. He can feel an idea coming together but he doesn’t want to investigate subtly for this one.  
  
He wants to go to Jacob and Elijah and ask them directly.  
  
It’s Grindelwald, he knows that. Grindelwald is the only thing she has in common with them that he’s sure of, but he’s not sure why two no-majs would have any involvement with Tina and Queenie.  
  
Graves walks to his desk and sits down, staring at the stack of paperwork but not really seeing it. He squints, trying to recall what he knows of those three months, what everyone, including Tina, have told him.  
  
Grindelwald searching for an Obscurus, manipulating Credence Barebone without realizing he was that Obscurus, Newt fucking Scamander and his suitcase, aided by…  
  
“A no-maj,” Graves mutters and closes his eyes, pressing his fingers into them and shaking his head.  
  
A no-maj, as he’s always been referred to around Graves, aided Scamander and the Goldsteins with the escaped creatures and with trying to help Credence Barebone before he’d been obliterated out of existence. A no-maj Sera gave strict instructions to Obliviate.  
  
They’ve been worried about him going to the bakery because the no-maj wasn’t Obliviated. Because he would recognize Graves from when Grindelwald wore his face, because it put them at risk for arrest or punishment to not have Obliviated him.  
  
Graves doesn’t know if he wants to laugh, cry or yell at everyone for a while. Drag Tina and Queenie into his office and give a firm lecture about how this is never going to happen again or he’ll throw them into Attermarc himself and not give a damn about it.  
  
But that’s not what he wants to do. That’s what _before Grindelwald_ Percival Graves would have done and though he may come out of this in roughly the same shape he was before, he’s still changed in some ways.  
  
Because he doesn’t want Tina and Queenie to know that he knows this, not today. Because he wants to know the reason why they didn’t Obliviate Jacob. He wants to know what Elijah has to do with any of it, because there was only one no-maj that aided them that day.  
  
Graves feels the answer, knows it’s close, and decides to let his mind work through it today. He’ll go to the bakery in the morning, whether the mystery is solved yet or not, and find out the truth either way.  
  
He’d been hoping for a place where people didn’t know him, didn’t stare, left him in peace so he could enjoy pastries and coffee and he knew he didn’t have that the moment he’d stepped into the bakery. But he’d ignored it because it’s easier to, because he didn’t want to know how he touched their lives, Grindelwald or no, and it turns out he wandered straight into the middle of the entire fucking thing.  
  
It does make him laugh then, however bitterly.  
  
No-majs might call it fate. Eliza might call it happenstance, his to decide if it’s fortunate or unfortunate. He might call it a cruel irony.  
  
Whatever it is, Graves will find out tomorrow and deal with a potential shitshow, his to fully embrace now, and he might lose what he’s only just found in the smile and trust of a man that makes Graves’ days better.  
  
He smiles grimly, because it might be best for them all if he does. And he’s used to loss, has been for a very long time, and it only makes him feel hollowed out anymore.  
  
When he’s home that night, Graves has three full glasses of whiskey and tells himself he deserves it.  
  
——  
  
The alcohol does make it harder to wake up at four in the morning and it takes a potion, a long, hot shower, drops in his eyes to clear the redness, and a thorough brushing of his teeth before he looks vaguely put together again.  
  
He’d like to get more sleep.  
  
Graves would like a lot of things and he doesn’t ask for much from anyone, preferring to get what he wants himself. But he asks for loyalty and honesty from his department, from his friends, and he hasn’t gotten that here. He doesn’t know if it’s a betrayal quite yet, that missing piece had no chance of hitting him once he hit the bottle, and he’s too fucking annoyed to put it together before he goes to the bakery.  
  
It’s early July and the sun rises earlier these days, but it’s not quite up yet at a quarter to five. He Disapparates out of the alley near his apartment building and to Brooklyn, across the street from the bakery.  
  
The lights are on, preparing to open soon and he’s fairly sure they both get here at three to get the most popular items going anyway, but he’d like a few moments of privacy with them.  
  
He’ll ensure it’s more than a few moments if he needs it.  
  
Graves walks across the quiet street, most shops here not opening until eight or nine, and he’d come here this early every day if the whiskey didn’t make it difficult.  
  
He steps up to the door and squints as he looks inside, but he sees no movement in the back room. The door is locked still and Graves raises his hand to knock before he hears voices in the alley between the bakery and another store. Graves moves to the corner and recognizes Jacob and Elijah’s voices.  
  
“How many more people gotta tell you it’s a bad idea before you realize it’s a bad idea?” Jacob asks. “Four of us now. I’m telling you, it’s a _bad idea.”_  
  
“I hate it though,” Elijah says quietly, his voice not carrying nearly as well down the alley.  
  
There’s a small crash and Graves thinks they’re taking trash out. Lucky him.  
  
“I know you do,” Jacob says with a sigh. “But it’s still a bad idea.”  
  
“He’ll find out one day.”  
  
“Sure he will. But let’s worry about it on that day, huh?”  
  
“You’re okay with him finding out on his own and not us telling him the truth? I’m not, Jacob. You know what might happen to both of us then. If we… if we tell him the truth, maybe he’ll take it alright.”  
  
“Hah! You know what he is. I think the chance of him taking it alright is pretty slim. Maybe you should put a little separation between you two. He’s all you talk about every morning, _all morning,_ and look, I get it, I really do, but it’s dangerous. For all of us.”  
  
“When I look at him, that’s hard to believe. When I see the way he looks at me,” Elijah says softly and there’s pain in his voice. “Every time he says _Elijah_ I wish he would say my real name.”  
  
“Don’t talk about it so loud,” Jacob mutters and their footsteps move closer to the bakery. “Hey, it’s alright. Well, it isn’t, maybe, but it will be. We’ll figure this whole thing out and maybe life can be different for you then.”  
  
“Life hasn’t been kind to me since I was two months old.”  
  
“Really wish Tina hadn’t gone digging so far,” Jacob says dryly. “It’s already different, isn’t it? Look at you, you smile every day and you enjoy it here with me. Small steps, right?”  
  
“I know… I only ever wanted to be normal. To have this, friends and a job. I know I’m lucky to have those things, finally, and I know… I _know_ it’s a bad idea, but I don’t know how much longer I can hear him say the wrong name and not tell him the truth.”  
  
Graves leans against the storefront and looks up at the night sky, steadily moving toward dawn. He sighs and decides he’s heard enough. Put the pieces together and there is no desire to celebrate that fact, to be satisfied that he knows the truth and to know he has all the resources in the world to take care of the problem.  
  
He doesn’t feel much of anything at the moment.  
  
He moves around the corner and leans against the brick wall, crossing his arms and looking at Jacob and Elijah. They’re standing in front of the door into the back and Elijah’s shoulders are slumped, a familiar sight to Graves but one he’s not fond of, and Jacob is patting his shoulder.  
  
“I’m not so good with words, but these things have… have a way… oh. Oh,” Jacob says when he catches sight of Graves, opening and closing his mouth. He lifts his hand and points. “We might have skipped a few steps.”  
  
Graves smiles wryly, grimly, and looks at Elijah - not truly Elijah anymore - turn and look at him. He goes as white as he had the first time he set eyes on Graves and Graves has a much more thorough understanding as to why now.  
  
The shitshow that is his life, this is what Grindelwald has left them all with, only gets better and better.  
  
He walks toward them and it makes his heart twinge when the man he’s grown far too fond of, whose smile brightens his day, even if he only thinks of it and doesn’t see it, shrinks away.  
  
“Uhh, Percy… Mister Graves,” Jacob says. “This probably hasn’t sounded so great—”  
  
“How about some coffee?” Graves asks.  
  
Jacob blinks a few times. “Oh. Sure. Right, coffee,” he says and woodenly walks into the back room, gesturing for them to follow him.  
  
Graves stares at Credence Barebone and Credence stares back, eyes wide and fearful, bright with tears, and Graves can see he’s trembling. He sighs and moves closer, gesturing him inside.  
  
“Coffee and pastries have been working to make it all a little more bearable for me these past few months. I imagine it’s been the same for you. Come on, inside.”  
  
Credence winces, like he’s terrified of what awaits him inside, but he nods jerkily and walks into the long kitchen. Graves follows, closing the door behind himself and walks out behind the counter. He waves his hand at the front of the bakery and the blinds - for the summer heat - fall down over the glass windows and the glass door as well.  
  
He pulls his wand to ensure a precise spell for no-majs to see only a dark and empty bakery rather than them and with another flick, he puts a sign on the door to indicate the bakery will be open tomorrow.  
  
When he looks at Jacob and Credence, Jacob is gaping at him and Credence is staring at the floor, pale as a ghost.  
  
“Coffee, Jacob, and a few apple strudels. Join us when it’s done,” Graves says and walks to a larger table with four chairs. He sits down and leans back and when Credence glances at him, he gestures him closer.  
  
Credence looks like he’s walking the plank but he comes without complaint and sits across from Graves, holding his hands in his lap. “Percy,” he says quietly. “Mister Graves—”  
  
“Percy,” Graves says firmly. “I told you to call me Percy and that hasn’t changed. I’m not going to lock you in the deepest dungeon and throw away the key, Credence.”  
  
Credence grimaces and Graves supposes hearing his real name isn’t all he expected it to be. “I think I’m more concerned thirty Aurors are going to try and kill me again,” he says and looks down at the table. “They didn’t the first time.”  
  
“And that’s one hell of a story I’m dying to hear,” Graves says. “But that’s not going to happen either. What’s going to happen is that you, Jacob and I are going to have a conversation about how we got from that subway to the bakery this morning. The truth of it, since Tina and Queenie decided not to trust me with it.”  
  
“Think they were afraid you’d lock Credence in the deepest dungeon and throw away the key. And Obliviate me,” Jacob says from behind the counter. “Everything I’ve heard about you, before the whole… imposter wizard thing, I don’t blame them for thinking that.”  
  
“And yet that whole imposter wizard thing changed things in our lives. Wouldn’t you agree?”  
  
“Yeah,” Jacob sighs. “Can’t argue with that.” He brings a tray over with a coffee carafe, three mugs and cream and sugar, along with three apple strudels. “Mostly for you two, of course.”  
  
Graves looks at Credence, watching him stare down at the table. He looks like he may vomit and Graves knows the feeling all too well, knowing that your life may well be irrevocably changed or you may lose it entirely.  
  
But Graves isn’t Mary Lou Barebone and he isn’t Gellert Grindelwald and he isn’t Seraphina Picquery and prefers to see Credence smile. He wants to know how he survived, oh he does, he wants the entire truth, but he knows Credence needs a softer hand in this.  
  
Knew that before he knew what his involvement was.  
  
The fact that Credence wants him in the way he does, is looking at him the same way Graves is looking at him, is something else entirely. He would have been happy to know that, but now he knows the man who smiles at him and wants him to say his real name was manipulated by Grindelwald for three months while looking like Graves.  
  
Graves doesn’t know who Credence actually sees when he looks at him anymore.  
  
He’d said he knew he wasn’t Grindelwald, not so explicitly, but Graves understands that now. He knows he is Percival Graves, that his eyes are kinder, but Graves doesn’t trust that Credence hadn’t formed some sort of attachment to Grindelwald and has latched onto him because he knows his face so well.  
  
It makes him ill to think Credence hasn’t separated them. That his smile might be for a madman and never was for him to begin with. His instinct is to put distance between them but he wants to hear the story first.  
  
“Percy,” Credence says and his voice trembles with tears. “Please don’t Obliviate Jacob. It’s my fault they’re involved with me at all. Please don’t arrest Tina and Queenie.”  
  
Graves smiles shortly. “As much as it would amuse me to throw them in cells overnight, I have no plans to arrest or Obliviate anyone,” he says and raises an eyebrow when they both look at him in surprise. “I want the truth. I want it all. I want it today. We’ll figure out what our lives are going to look like when I get it. We are past the point of no return regarding a few things,” he adds, “and Grindelwald fucked with my life as much as he fucked with yours. I’m not unsympathetic to that.”  
  
He pours a cup of coffee and grabs a strudel off the plate.  
  
“If you don’t mind, Credence,” Graves continues, “I’d like for you to tell me how you survived and how you found help after. The Obscurus’ magical signature hasn’t been detected since that night.”  
  
Credence pours himself a cup of coffee with cream and sugar, his hands lightly trembling, and takes in a fortifying breath. “I don’t really know how,” he sighs. “I felt pain. Then I felt nothing for a while. It felt like I was floating _in_ nothing and it was so dark. But one day I opened my eyes and I saw Tina and Queenie. They saw me too, even though I was… I didn’t look like myself. But they talked to me for hours and it went away. Back inside of me. They took me home and have helped me since then. It was just before the New Year then.”  
  
“The Obscurus is gone?” Graves asks but he thinks he knows the answer.  
  
Credence looks down at his lap and shakes his head. “No,” he mutters. “We’ve been doing a lot of work to help me control it. But we don’t know how to make it go away. Mister Scamander is researching ways he might be able to help me.”  
  
Graves raises his eyebrows. “From England?”  
  
Credence glances at Jacob and they both grimace.  
  
Graves rubs his hand over his forehead as he closes his eyes and flutters the other one. “Yet another way you all have flouted the law. We’ll get back to Mister Scamander,” he says. “There have been no incidents?”  
  
“No,” Credence says. “Well, nothing destructive,” he amends. “I had nightmares the first few nights and sometimes… sometimes I’d wake up and I was the Obscurus and Tina and Queenie were there to help me out of it. I take sleeping draughts now to not have nightmares. Mister Scamander says it’s an uncontrollable parasite but now that I’m away from Ma and from… from him, things haven’t been as difficult. I’ve made friends, there are people who care about me. _Actually_ care,” he mumbles and there are tears in his eyes. “I’m not afraid to be around people anymore. I feel happy most days. I don’t think it’s dangerous when I do.”  
  
“Not likely,” Graves agrees. But he’s far more pessimistic. Anything can happen - an accident, a mugging, a fight - and the Obscurus might become uncontrollable. But it’s been over six months and it hasn’t happened so he’ll take it for now. “I am happy for you, Credence. I meant that before and I mean it now. Tina was the one who told me most of the story when I was ready to hear it and I understand her anger for how you were treated in the subway. You deserved a chance to be heard.”  
  
“Is that why you’re not arresting me?” Credence asks and looks at Graves, brushing a tear off of his cheek.  
  
Graves smiles wryly. “One of the reasons,” he says. “And you, Mister Kowalski? How did you come out of this with your memories intact?”  
  
“Oh, well… turns out Queenie and I were pretty taken with each other those couple of nights. Turns out we still are,” Jacob says with some pride. “Tina decided Queenie being happy was better than erasing my memory of it all. Said we owed her whenever she gets arrested for it too.”  
  
“She’s very lucky I’m fond of her and even more lucky that arresting anyone, Obliviating anyone, all comes with the Madame President of MACUSA knowing about it. And I happen to not want her to know shit about any of this. Not yet,” Graves says. “Not until I know she wouldn’t give the orders herself. I came looking for a place no one would know me and I didn’t get that, but I don’t want to change it.”  
  
“You’re not going to tell anyone?” Jacob asks with some awe.  
  
“No,” Graves says firmly. “But I’m going to have a stern conversation with the Goldsteins. And Mister Scamander eventually, about numerous things. I want to be involved with this. No more lies, no more hiding this from me. I have a duty to protect no-maj and wizardkind alike and I’m going to uphold that. I want to make sure you stay safe and healthy,” he says to Credence. “And I want to know what Scamander is looking into. If you want to go on enjoying these freedoms, I need that to happen.”  
  
“No problem for me,” Jacob says quickly and takes a bite of the strudel. “Anything to keep Credence here protected.”  
  
Credence frowns as he looks at his coffee mug, holding it. “You’re afraid I’m going to harm someone someday. You want to keep an eye on me.”  
  
“I said I want to see you safe and healthy,” Graves says calmly. “You are neither safe nor healthy if the Obscurus takes over. I know that shit happens in this world when we least expect it and you can’t always control that. You know it too. Knowing you’re happy here is good, Credence. For you, for your friends, for everyone in this city. It’s an added bonus for me because I happen to care about you too.”  
  
Credence looks at Graves and doesn’t look like he believes him. “Okay,” he says. “I understand.” He purses his lips and furrows his brow. “We work every day to control my magic and I think it’s helped.”  
  
“You have a wand?”  
  
“Yes,” Credence mutters and takes a drink of his coffee.  
  
“I’m not going to take it away,” Graves chuckles. “Things aren’t going to change. Not yet. The girls are teaching you spells?”  
  
“Mostly basic things,” Credence says. “But some harder ones too because it feels like it helps to concentrate. To keep my magic busy elsewhere. I’m lucky to have them. And Jacob and Newt,” he adds with a faint, tired smile. “I know you want to be involved but… will you come back here? I understand if you don’t want to.”  
  
Graves peers at Credence. “I’d like to,” he says. “I enjoy it here. Will you give us a moment?” he asks Jacob.  
  
Jacob grimaces like he knows what conversation is left to have, for today anyway, and nods. “Yeah, sure. No problem,” he says and stands. He squeezes Credence’s shoulder and takes his coffee and plate to the back.  
  
Graves watches him go and sighs when he looks at Credence. He looks worried again, staring down at his coffee mug, his fingers white-knuckled as he holds it.  
  
“Credence,” Graves says. “I enjoy coming here for a lot of different reasons. You being one of them.” Credence looks up at him, eyes bright. “And I know you say that you know I’m not him anymore. But I don’t know how true that is.”  
  
Credence blinks a few times and he looks torn between resignation and anger. “I don’t look at you and see him,” he says. “I did the first couple of times. I think that was to be expected. I _knew_ you weren’t him, I read the whole story of how it happened, but anyone would’ve been scared, at least for a few minutes. I know that too. He never meant anything he told me. He was using me. He wanted to keep using me when he knew I was the Obscurus. I knew he didn’t actually care about me that night. He’s gone, in a wizarding prison in Europe. Percy Graves is sitting across from me now. I’m not mixed up between you two.”  
  
Graves watches him and wants to believe it. But he knows Credence Barebone and the life he led too, before Grindelwald stormed through New York, and he doesn’t know if Credence is being influenced in a way he can’t or refuses to see.  
  
“None of that changes the fact that you knew him when he looked like me,” Graves says. “I don’t know what happened between you two. The things that were done or said or promised.”  
  
“We weren’t sleeping together, if that’s what you mean,” Credence says with a heavy amount of bitterness. “I was only attached to him because he was the first person to show me kindness and tell me what I deserved. Who told me I was a wizard and he’d teach me magic. I know it was all lies now, all until he realized what I was. He betrayed me and hurt me the way everyone had until after that night. I’ve talked about this for months with everyone. Months, Percy. I worked through knowing you were different people a long time ago. And when you started coming in… well, we’ve been talking about that too because they worry about the same thing you do.”  
  
“They agree it’s a bad idea. Even if I didn’t know who you are, they agree it’s a bad idea,” Graves says. “You realize why we think that?”  
  
“I do,” Credence says and meets Graves’ eyes levelly. “But I’m also not a child. I’m perfectly capable of critical thinking because I had a long time to learn that. I’m perfectly capable of separating you two because I’m not stupid, the way I was told I was for so long. I’m also capable of knowing my own thoughts and feelings and not needing other people to tell me what they are anymore.”  
  
Graves leans back in his seat and peers at Credence for a while. He’s angry, angry that he’s being reminded of what his mother did, what anyone did to him, including Grindelwald. Graves can understand that - more intimately than he’d like - but the fear of harming Credence further is still there and he’s not sure how soon it’ll ease.  
  
Tina and Queenie have known he’s been coming here since the first day he stepped inside. They’ve asked because they’re worried about Credence and Jacob, but Graves would wager they’re more worried about Credence. They want to protect him, they care about him and have given him a place in this world, real and genuine love, and Graves wonders how they feel about Credence’s affection for him.  
  
His own for Credence.  
  
They’ve talked about it, Credence says, but Graves hasn’t been a part of those conversations. Doesn’t know how much they’ve gone into them.  
  
“What do they say when they talk about being worried about this?” he asks, because he needs to know that.  
  
Credence frowns. “They were worried I was… that I’m…” he trails off, his cheeks pink. “That I like you. Because of him. And when they told me why, I told them what I’m telling you. We didn’t have any kind of relationship. I didn’t feel for him in a romantic way, Percy, I was miserable and terrified of my mother and making sure she didn’t know I was speaking about witches with a witch. I didn’t have room for that. I just wanted to help him so I could get help. I was stuck in what he was telling me he could give me, not stuck in feelings for him. You came in here and he might’ve looked like you, but you two couldn’t possibly be more different. I see you, Percy. Not him. I suppose it’s up to you whether you believe me or not. Queenie does, for whatever it’s worth, because she hears the truth whenever we talk about it.”  
  
Graves smiles, a little wryly. Credence doesn’t have practice in Occlumency so Queenie would be hearing the truth. Or the truth Credence tells himself anyway, but Graves is inclined to believe Credence knows his own feelings, as he says. That he’s away from oppression and has been allowed freedom, in some ways, has been allowed to grow into his own person finally.  
  
A work in progress, maybe, but so is Graves, and he thinks if people questioned him and if he might be lying to himself about his own capabilities, he’d probably curse them into yesteryear.  
  
It is insulting and Credence may be nine years younger than him but he’s not a child and deserves the respect of not being treated like one.  
  
Graves demanded that respect when he was eleven years old because he’d been forced to grow up too fast by his own abusers, the same as Credence. He knows that feeling, he knows what it does to the mind, and he knows Credence had a very, very long time to think about it before he’d escaped.  
  
And Credence has had four people, all world-weary in their own ways, asking him the same questions and getting the same answers.  
  
“I do believe you, Credence,” Graves says and smiles when Credence glances at him. He doesn’t believe Graves and it makes him chuckle. “I do. I might not have in January but I think we’ve both done a lot of healing and growing since then.”  
  
“I have a wand now,” Credence agrees. “I’m a wizard. I have a job and friends and a home. I’m learning every day. And I’m not alone in being… being fond of you. Tina and Queenie are too. Not in the same way, maybe, but they trust you and they feel protective over you too, you know. Even if Tina says these days you’re more… umm… recal…”  
  
“Recalcitrant,” Graves says dryly and waves his hand. “I’ll thank her for that later.” He smirks when Credence grins, like he can’t help but do so. “What do you want, Credence? From me?”  
  
Credence smiles and shrugs, looking at his coffee. “I don’t know. To keep talking to you but more often. Maybe to see you outside of here. Not that I go anywhere but here and Jacob’s apartment and sometimes Tina and Queenie’s, for everyone’s safety. I just want to keep seeing you and hearing you say my real name. I want you to keep looking at me the way you have been.”  
  
Graves smiles and the fondness he feels for Credence hasn’t gone away. Feels like it’s grown, in fact. He offers his hand on the table and Credence takes it. His hand is cold and is still trembling but Graves gently squeezes it and thinks he can help Credence too. In ways the others can’t, in ways that Credence will only accept from him and he will only give to Credence.  
  
“I think we can manage that,” he says. Credence looks surprised and Graves sighs, gently. “I knew you recognized me from something Grindelwald did from the moment I first stepped in here. I didn’t think it was this but that didn’t stop me from coming back, did it? Didn’t stop me from thinking about you when I’m at home or work. Didn’t stop me from wanting the same things you do. Sure as shit isn’t going to stop me now.”  
  
Credence laughs and looks at their joined hands. “I want you to be comfortable too,” he says. “But I’d like to try at least.”  
  
“We will,” Graves says.  
  
He doesn’t foresee any problems either. He thinks they won’t have to try very hard at all to make it work, to make it last. There’s something special about Credence and he knew that before he knew who the hell he actually was.  
  
Probably should have figured it out sooner, but he’d told himself about a hundred times he was going to make this a place of peace and not worry about Grindelwald, so he supposes it’s his own fault.  
  
“What spell did you cast?” Credence asks with a smile as he looks at the doors. “They’ve been coming for the last ten minutes but they’re acting like they can’t see anyone in here.”  
  
Graves turns to glance at the door and at someone peering inside, ignoring the very obvious sign he’d put up. The sunrise behind the man is a better sight. He smirks and looks at Credence.  
  
“Just a quick concealment charm. It looks dark and empty to them.”  
  
“Quick concealment charm,” Credence says with amusement. “Quick for you, maybe.”  
  
“Quick for you one day too,” Graves says with a smile. “I know they’ve told you how powerful your magic is, even without the Obscurus.”  
  
“They have,” Credence says. “Which is why I’m terrified of every new spell we try. I didn’t touch my wand for a week after I got it.”  
  
Graves sighs and strokes his thumb over Credence’s hand. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he says. “You won’t hurt anyone.”  
  
Credence nods. “They keep telling me that but it’s hard to get it out of my head,” he says with a shrug. “Maybe you can teach me a spell or two. Tina says you’re the best wand in America.”  
  
“I definitely am,” Graves says and chuckles when Credence pinches his hand. “I’d be happy to teach you a spell or two.”  
  
“Thank you,” Credence says with that wide and carefree smile of his. The genuine one that makes his eyes crinkle and that Graves thinks he could look at for the rest of his life. “Do you have another busy day ahead of you?”  
  
“Unfortunately I do,” Graves sighs. “We’re in the middle of a large investigation. It’ll be in the paper soon. Our paper anyway.”  
  
“I read that one at home,” Credence says. “Will you come in before then?”  
  
“I will,” Graves promises. “Every day if I can. And we’ll plan for meeting outside of here when work slows down by next week.”  
  
Credence smiles and nods. “Okay,” he says. “Thank you, Percy. Please be safe.”  
  
“Always,” Graves says and stands. Credence does as well and he looks like he wants the exact thing Graves plans on giving him.  
  
A good hug.  
  
Embracing him for the first time feels good. Feels right. Credence’s racing heart and the gentle way he sniffs as he rests his head on Graves’ shoulder are things he hopes get better in time. He rubs Credence’s back and thinks he can get used to him smelling like dough and warm, baked bread and something sweeter.  
  
They stay like that for a while, Graves’ fingers brushing through Credence’s hair and Credence’s fingers tight against his back.  
  
“Alright, love,” Graves sighs and pulls back, pressing a chaste kiss to Credence’s cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Tina knows where to find me if you need anything.”  
  
Credence grins and nods. “Thank you. Don’t yell at her too much, maybe?”  
  
“Just a little,” Graves says and winks. “Have a good day.”  
  
Graves leaves after he squeezes Credence’s hand, out of the back door with a salute toward Jacob, who is making some sort of dough. He waves hesitantly back and Graves steps into the alley. Once he’s sure no one is looking, he heads to MACUSA.  
  
When he walks into his department, only a handful of the morning shift is in, including Tina Goldstein. She looks at him and he points at her, then points at his office.  
  
Tina cringes but she gets up and walks into his office anyway.  
  
Graves doesn’t yell, not really. He only threatens the Wand Permit Office a couple of times and cursing and deporting Scamander once or twice. They mostly laugh about it after, because really, what the hell else can they do after the last nearly nine months of their lives?  
  
——  
  
Graves sees Credence every day at the bakery before the mass raid. He comes in early so they have a few minutes before the rush comes in, but they’re both eager to get some time alone together.  
  
The raid and the subsequent clean up, interrogations, and writing and filing charges takes a few days. All of it is successful, no injuries, which means they’ve done their job well. It puts Graves in the same room as Sera for a while and if he feels a little more bitter toward her for what she ordered his department to do to Credence, well, he thinks that’s fair.  
  
He wants to fix the relationship. He does. But he needs more time on that and he doesn’t tell his Healer about Credence, he can’t, but she tells him it’s understandable.  
  
Graves knows this his Aurors would never not follow an order from the President, he knows why they did what they did, might have given the same order himself in a different situation, so he can’t blame them completely for what happened to Credence. But he does call another meeting with the entire department to discuss the night at the subway and figure out how to do better anyway. How to plan for the unexpected, like an Obscurial, and has them read more published research on them than they go over in training. He doesn’t think another Obscurus is going to come around, but he’s paranoid and knowing it’s still inside of Credence and that it might come out again, knowing that Sera might give the same order to kill him and not knowing if he’d survive a second time, makes it a priority for him.  
  
Graves has a few different conversations with Tina and Queenie about Credence, about how he’s managing the Obscurus and what they’re doing to help. They tell him Scamander has one in his suitcase with a great amount of reluctance and Graves looks to the heavens for patience, but he does believe them when they say it can’t cause damage now that it's without a host.  
  
Scamander is looking for a way to separate it from Credence without killing him, an idea that makes Graves break out in a cold sweat, but they’ve talked about what happens if he doesn’t find a way. About getting it under Credence’s control, a parasite that’s uncontrollable to their knowledge, but Credence has done it so far.  
  
He’s powerful and maybe it’s the perfect storm, an Obscurus created from an older host with more experience in handling emotions and abuse, unfortunately, that makes it more controllable. There’s no research on it because it’s never happened before and Graves has to keep an open mind on magic at all times, unpredictable in a lot of ways, so he’s willing to put a little hope into that idea.  
  
The first time Graves sees Credence outside of the bakery is when everyone fits into the Goldsteins’ small apartment for dinner, including Scamander, who is living in his suitcase which lays on their living room floor.  
  
Credence and Jacob have told Graves all about the suitcase and they both might think it’s the best thing that’s ever existed, but Graves refuses to go in for now because it may actually give him a heart attack.  
  
He has a hard enough time speaking with Scamander, torn between his annoyance for what happened with his creatures that are all very much still in New York and gratitude for what he did for himself, for Credence, what he’s continuing to do for him. He’ll get over it one day, but the Auror in him, the Director in him, is hard to appease when it comes to breaking the law in such spectacular ways.  
  
To Scamander’s credit, he never seems fazed in any way by the fact that Graves is a walking reminder of how he almost died in MACUSA.  
  
Once the awkwardness of the first few minutes at dinner have passed, Graves is bombarded with a lot of stories from the beginning to now, most with a lot of laughter because it’s easier to find the humor in it all rather than focusing on the pain.  
  
Graves isn’t so surprised when they tell him it’s Credence who pointed the way to where he was being held, thinks he knew that all along and will thank Credence for it later, when they’re finally alone.  
  
Credence walks him out later that night and Graves wants to take him home, for nothing more than to sit alone with him, but he kisses him instead and tells him he’ll see him soon.  
  
 _Soon_ is only a few days later, when the bakery closes around mid-afternoon and Graves takes half a day and meets Credence there. Jacob looks happy for them and Graves suspects everyone is, though Tina will probably chew her nails blunt for a while.  
  
She’ll get over it too.  
  
Graves takes Credence to his apartment and after they’ve walked inside and Graves has loosened his tie and taken off his jacket, watching Credence gaze around with a smile, he thinks he looks like he belongs here.  
  
“Had to perform an exorcism in a few rooms when I first got home,” Graves says and laughs when Credence gapes at him. “I’m joking, he didn’t leave any poltergeists behind. Just his stench. Drank all my whiskey,” he adds darkly. “Bought a new liquor cabinet and wardrobe and it felt like home again.”  
  
Credence huffs and shakes his head. “I’m glad he only ever made me meet him in dark alleys,” he says with a dry smile. “It’s beautiful, you know. I’m glad you stayed, even if you had to buy a new wardrobe.”  
  
“It rotates often enough anyway,” Graves says and gets them glasses of pomegranate juice because he has no desire to drink while Credence is here.  
  
“You’re a bit of a dandy, you know.”  
  
“I take umbrage with that word,” Graves says and moves to the sofa, patting the spot next to him until Credence grins and sits down. “It might be true but I prefer _professional.”_  
  
“I’ve never seen you truly professional except for your clothes,” Credence says and leans against Graves when he wraps his arm around his shoulders. “You curse too much for it.”  
  
Graves scoffs. “I curse even more at work and everyone takes me very seriously because of it,” he says and smiles when Credence looks at him, amused. “You look good here, you know.”  
  
“I feel good here,” Credence says with a smile of his own as he glances around. “This might be the nicest place I’ve ever been inside of but it still feels like a home.”  
  
“I don’t spend enough time in it, but I’m glad to hear that,” Graves says. “You’re welcome whenever you want to come here. Let me know when I’m in the bakery and I’ll come pick you up after work.”  
  
Credence’s smile, the wide and carefree one, will always get Graves’ heart racing.  
  
“I like the sound of that,” he says softly. “It’s nice to be alone with you. I wish we could go to other places too. I’ve only been in the bakery, at home or with Tina and Queenie. And the suitcase,” he adds with a laugh. “It’d be nice to go out with you too.”  
  
“Why can’t we?” Graves asks and shrugs when Credence raises his eyebrows. “Are we not wizards? New York City is not somewhere you’re sentenced to, you know. If you want to go to a restaurant or take a walk or just get a breath of fresh air, I can take you wherever you want to go. A small benefit of no one else in MACUSA knowing your face.”  
  
Credence bites his lip, smiling faintly and his eyes are brighter, but Graves thinks it’s a good thing today. “I never thought to ask them to take me out of the city, if they wanted,” he says. “I’d love to. Maybe somewhere with trees.”  
  
“There are a lot of those Upstate,” Graves says with a chuckle. “I know a few good places. Take some lunch and sit by a lake, maybe, just you and me.”  
  
“Yes, please,” Credence says.  
  
He leans in for a kiss and Graves gladly gives it to him. Over and over again, as it turns out, until Credence is half in his lap, his hands in Graves’ hair and Graves’ hands under his shirt, over the warm but uneven skin of his back.  
  
It doesn’t go much beyond that because Graves isn’t sure either of them are ready yet, but that’s perfectly alright. It’s closeness they need and the rest will come in time.  
  
Graves cooks dinner later and they spend a lot of time talking, more at ease and with more humor than they already do. He tells Credence about his life, about his sister, and Credence tells him more about learning to be a wizard. He’ll tell Graves more about his own life, the harder parts of it, in time too.  
  
He takes Credence home late and with a long, lingering kiss, he promises to see him soon.  
  
It becomes part of their routine. Seeing each other at the bakery most mornings, when Graves doesn’t have meetings or a long night beforehand, and Credence comes to his apartment a few nights a week.  
  
A few nights become overnight over the weeks. So they can wake up together, go out together, up north or somewhere else and Credence can breathe in the fresh air outside of the city, so he can walk down the street with people and not worry. He’s happy, that’s not hard to see, it’s not hard to feel, and Tina tells Graves often enough that she thought it was a bad idea but it turned out to be a good one and hopes he doesn’t fuck it up.  
  
 _No problem,_ he tells her dryly every time.  
  
It truly isn’t because Credence and Graves fit together, in a way he’s never fit with anyone in his life, and there may be difficult days ahead, that’s life, but it’s as easy as breathing to be with Credence in every way.  
  
The Obscurus inside of him doesn’t have a reason to break free anymore and they’re still working to find a solution to that too, but everything will come in time.  
  
Graves and Sera will be friends again someday. And someday she’ll hear Credence’s story too.  
  
But for now, Graves enjoys his mornings in the bakery, sometimes crammed at a couple small tables with Credence at his side and Newt and Tina, and Jacob and Queenie. Eating fresh pastries and drinking strong coffee and laughing - or trying not to cry, in Graves’ case, when Newt gets going about his various creatures in his suitcase and how their breeding is going - and having every reason in the world to smile.  
  
It’s strange how life can be turned upside down, changed from what you once knew to be normal, but sometimes it brings you people you never would have met otherwise and those people bring you everything you’ve ever been looking for.

When Graves looks at Credence and watches him laugh, watches his eyes crinkle, watches the way his hands move when he talks, he knows this all to be true.  
  
For him and Credence both and Graves will see to it that it never ends for either of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Guess I'm on a feel-good kick lately lol I know I need it after these last four weeks. Or this last year, probably. I would like to write another long fic soon but I've got some art commissions to take care of first, wish me luck!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it and I'd love to hear from you. It's similar in a few ways to my other fics but gdi I don't care, I love exploring this portion of a fix-it of sorts canon au. I know Jacob and the bakery are in Manhattan but this worked for me :D
> 
> Thank you, as always, to Erin and Mom, for all your support and feedback!!! <3
> 
> [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/vtforpedro)


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